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What is webhelper in Windows 10 Task Manager?
If you go to Task Manager in Windows 10, you will find a process called webhelper.exe there. You may see it listed along with conhost.exe, csrss.exe under the Details tab or System processes section of Task Manager.
So what is this webhelper process? Is it important? Should you terminate it?
The webhelper process in Windows 10 Task Manager belongs to the Web Apps feature of the operating system. This feature was introduced in Windows 8. It allows you to run web applications in a protected environment where they have access to some of the features of Windows.
For example, it allows your web browser to play HTML5 videos without the need for a separate plugin. It also allows these apps to use Internet Explorer 11’s new rendering engine, better performance and security than older versions.
Web Apps is a sandboxed environment that is supposed to protect the operating system from possible security issues caused by malicious code served from those websites. In short, webhelper.exe is an important process in Windows 10’s Web Apps feature.
In most cases, it is not recommended to terminate this process unless you troubleshoot a specific problem in your system.
How to Fix webhelper using 100% CPU?
If you open your Task Manager and find the webhelper.exe process using over 90% of CPU in Windows 10, you may be wondering how to fix it.
However, it would be best if you did not worry about it because Microsoft has implemented a throttle mechanism for this process in recent versions (at least in Windows 8 and above). This throttling mechanism will temporarily reduce the priority of webhelper.exe if it exceeds a certain limit set by these internal Windows processes.
These processes run as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM and will have a higher priority over a standard user process. So, they can effectively control the CPU usage by any other standard user process, even if that process belongs to the operating system.
You can force the throttling mechanism to stop by running the following command in an elevated command prompt window:
taskkill /IM webhelper.exe /F
This will immediately terminate the web helper process (which belongs to Microsoft) and its child processes using high CPU usage. Therefore, you should use this command only as a temporary fix to quickly eliminate the high CPU usage issue.
If you are still getting high CPU usage from web helper, you might need to clear its cache or restart your PC. Clearing the webhelper process’s cache can temporarily free its resources so that other processes can use it. For example, you can clear the webhelper process’s cache by running the following command in an elevated command prompt window:
Ipconfig /flushdns
How to Uninstall webhelper in Windows 10?
If you go to Control Panel in Windows 10, you will see an option named Programs and Features which replaces the older Add/Remove Program feature of Windows. If you click on it, it will open a new window where you can uninstall or change the features of apps installed in your PC.
However, if webhelper is not in the list of installed Windows Apps, you have nothing to worry about. Microsoft has not removed it from Windows 10. You can install apps that are available in the Store or desktop apps to fix this issue.
So, if you are looking for webhelper’s uninstall option in Control Panel, look no further because it is not present there.
However, as mentioned before, webhelper is not a third-party program that came with an app you installed from the Store. This means you cannot uninstall it like any other app or desktop program in Windows 10.
This process is part of the operating system and Microsoft does not allow its users to uninstall it because it may cause problems with your system if the wrong process is removed.
So, you need to take ownership of WindowsApps folder in order to remove webhelper from your PC. However, before taking ownership of this important folder, make sure that you have turned off User Access Control (UAC) on your computer because it may block this process.
How to Disable WebHelper in Windows 10?
To take ownership of WindowsApps folder, open an elevated command prompt window by right-clicking on the Start button and then clicking on Command Prompt (Admin). Now, type the following command into it and hit Enter to get rid of webhelper.exe using high CPU usage issue permanently:
takeown /F “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” /A /R
After this, you will be able to edit the permissions of WindowsApps folder. Now, enter the following command into Command Prompt and press Enter:
icacls “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” /grant $(whoami):F
Now you can delete webhelper.exe file from the WindowsApps folder using this command:
del “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WebApp” /Q
Conclusion
I hope its clear now how you can uninstall webhelper from your windows system. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me in the comments section. Thanks for reading!
